A silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material is subjected to an imagewise exposure and then to development with an aromatic primary amine type color development agent to result in generating an oxidation product of the developing agent, which reacts with a dye-forming coupler (hereinafter referred to as a coupler) to thereby form a dye image. In the silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material, usually used as the coupler are a yellow coupler, a cyan coupler and a magenta coupler in combination. The dyes formed by these couplers have undesired sub-absorptions in many cases, and in employing them for a multi-layer constitutional silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material, the color reproducibility thereof is inclined to be deteriorated. Accordingly, there have so far been proposed the use of couplers which form an image with less sub-absorption.
Above all, a phenol type or naphthol type cyan coupler is generally used for forming a cyan dye image. However, the dyes formed by these couplers have unfavorable absorptions in the range of 400 to 450 nm and therefore have the serious problem that color reproducibility is markedly deteriorated. Accordingly, the solution of this problem is desired.
There are proposed as a means for solving this problem, cyan couplers such as pyrazoloazoles described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,873,183 and 2,4-diphenyimidazoles described in EP249,453A2. The dyes formed by these couplers have less unfavorable absorptions in a short wavelength region as compared with the dyes formed by the conventional cyan couplers. However, these couplers are not deemed to have enough color reproducibilities and in addition, there still remain problems that coupling activity is low and that fastness to heat and light is notably low. Further, a dye image faded by heat and light leads to a deteriorated color reproducibility.
In recent years, further higher performances are requested color reproducibility and fastness of a dye image obtained, and the light-sensitive material satisfying an excellent color reproducibility and having a superior fastness of a dye image is desired.